


Resonance

by kimigross



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adventure, Canon Fixit, Found Family, In-universe AU, Multi, graphic depiction of medical procedures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 11:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16263095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimigross/pseuds/kimigross
Summary: Hello! sure has been a Frickin whilethat's okay though, because during that Frickin while I've had a lot of shit happen. and the thing with shit happening is it changes your mindset sometimes. And sometimes that reason is because of two deaths in the family, or because you hate talking about money, or because work or university gets to you, or because your parents who have quietly pretended to like each other on the downlow your whole entire life finalize their divorce with three kids between the ages of 22 and 16 in the middle of it and you realize you don't know what a healthy relationship really looks like and you question your own sexuality and what you put out into the world based on your personal experiences and how they have shaped youit be like dat sometimesanyway im posting again because i write because it makes me happy and I have achieved the mindset and the motivation to want to be happy again in this way.Also cause I haven't watched Voltron in like 2 years and i heard it sucks now and since I've had this in the barrel for that long i figured now was the time, if only to spam r/idiots with screencaps of the comments this may or may not rake inPEACE & LOVE see u around





	Resonance

“Well then where the shit n’ shag is she?” Pidge says, personally affronted.

Shiro silently plucks the comm from Pidge’s ear. “Now, if you ever talk like that in front of me and I find out about it,” he mutters, shaking his head in a manner that Keith’s only seen grandmothers pull off.

On the other line, Lance’s snuffling laugh trickles through. 

“What else are you two seeing down there?” Shiro says, enunciating every word. Hunk’s comm pings in with a cheerful xylophone jingle.

Shiro’s shoulders drop. Keith pats him sympathetically. 

_ Dude, seriously, there’s nothing here. Everything’s working fine.  _ Hunk’s staticy voice comes through the dashboard.  _ Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again? _

Shiro opens his mouth, then closes it.

Keith can  _ hear  _ Lance’s head shake.  _ Bruh. Windows.  _

_ Windows, _ Hunk agrees.

“I don’t think the Black Lion uses Windows,” Shiro says, strained. 

_ D’you think she could run Doom? _

Lance gasps for a full five seconds.  _ YES. Pidge.  _

“If she doesn’t, she’s not our lion.” Pidge says gravely.

_ I wouldn’t expect anything less.  _

_ Hunky I actually would have expected that of you, of all people.  _

_ Why? _

_ Have you ever  _ **_looked_ ** _ at your bayard? _

There’s a pause, in which Shiro cocks his head.

Then he cracks a silly grin, trying to cover it with his hand. Keith’s brow furrows. 

“What?” 

Lance’s laughter bubbles over the comm again, shorting out as he starts going higher than the microphone can register.

When he speaks, Hunk sounds awed.  _...It’s a BFG… _

“The what?”

“His bayard looks like a BFG.” Shiro’s started to fall apart now, smile cracking its way onto his face even as he tries to compose himself. “The Big Fucking Gun. The Doom gun.”

_ I don’t think Keith’s played Doom, _ Lance says.

“Yes, I have, once.” Keith’s face scrunches. “Someone at my high school tried to run it on a fitbit.”

“Really? Did it work?” Shiro turns around to look at him, brow raised.

“Yeah, but it died after like five minutes.” Keith ponders this. “It was fun. Shit graphics, but fun.”

_ I’m glad we’re starting to recycle good memes, Lance’s are getting repetitive. _

Lance makes a hurt noise.  _ Forgive me for having limited source material in the ass end of a mecha lion in the ass end of space. _

_ I’d argue that’s actually where the most material is. _

“Okay! Back on track, please.” Shiro clears his throat, feeling very much like a kindergarten teacher. “Lance, Hunk, if you’re not finding anything come back up. She might just be late.”

_ A Queen is never late, everyone else is simply early,  _ Hunk says daintily, before his comm cuts off with another jingle.

****

This is not an ideal situation for Keith.

A day earlier, he and Pidge had been dropped on a desert planet as temporary escorts to the emissary of a rebel commander. Desert, Keith could deal with- But a desert that was swathed in perpetual darkness, its only lifeline strung along by a temperamental pair of black suns that burned and soured the land at all times was somewhat pushing it. He and Pidge were wrapped in feather-light grey cloth, wrapping around their arms and tunics and faces until nothing was exposed. When Lance dropped them off in Blue the other day he wouldn’t shut up about how they looked like ‘goth phase Reys.’

Pidge had pursed her lips. “Doesn’t that just make us Kylo Ren?”

Lance made an affronted sound, only his indignant pointer finger visible over the top of his pilot seat. “You did not just equate Kylo Ren with Rey in this lion. You did not just do that. That’s like comparing Keith and Lotor.”

“Who’s Rey in that configuration?”

Lance snorted. “Keith, duh. Sad, defensive desert orphans.” He paused, then said “No offense. Love ya bud.”

It was easier with the wrapping, but his eye sockets and the inside of his mouth had dried far quicker than he was used to under his mask. They negotiated the terms of their so-far peaceful partnership relatively quick, and the emissary was transported safely. There was no need for Keith’s marmora blade or whatever Pidge had picked up -a stubby, serrated thing with no discernable handle that Keith would generously call a shank.

As a result, both he and Pidge have sand in places he didn’t know there could be sand, and he’s starting to hate it. He didn’t think he hated sand. As a sad, defensive desert orphan, he’d lived in Arizona all his life, and he’d developed a pretty neutral relationship with sand. But the fact that it’s the only kind of substance that is the exact same throughout every planet they’ve been to, and that it feels like it’s in his  _ taint,  _ is leaning him further towards unadulterated loathing.

Here he stands, a mound of cloth and blades and contempt and sand, and the comms are down and Allura is late.

He wants his lion. A bath then a snack then a nap in Red’s cockpit. 

While Keith’s daydreaming, Pidge goes down again, and finds nothing wrong with Black. But still their radar blares empty. Finally, the comm patches through, fuzzy with feedback, to the castle. 

“Princess!” Shiro thumbs the volume. “Allura, can you hear me?”

_ Yes, yes, yes, I can hear you!  _ She sounds frazzled, even through the sticky channel.  _ We’re at the coordinates, where are you? _

Shiro’s brow furrows. Pidge blinks. “What do you mean  _ where are we,  _ we’re here.”

_ What? _

Pidge leans over the dash and checks their coordinates, reads them out number by number to Allura. Lance, who has been rhythmically squeaking his boots up the wall for the past ten minutes, raises his head. “What’s wrong?”

“Allura says she’s here, at the exact same coordinates.” Keith points to Black’s nav system. “But we don’t see her.” 

_ What?! _

“I- WE. DON’T. SEE. YOU.” Keith enunciates. 

_How can we be in precisely the same spot and not see each other? Was Lance driving?!_ _We should be right on top of each other!_

“Oof.”

“Okay, Allura, read me your coordinates again. In the exact order you have them in.” Pidge says, pushing her glasses into her hair. The movement jostles a small stream of sand to pile on the floor. “Fuckin’ space latitude.  _ Christ. _ ”

“I’ll be very happy if this is only a space latitude issue,” Hunk says.

“With our luck it won’t be.” Shiro sighs gustily, leaning back in his chair. 

“Knock on wood,” Lance raps three times on his own crotch, prompting a grunt from Hunk and a wheeze from Shiro.

“Shut up!” Pidge leans closer and filters through their signal. “Allura? Allura, can you hear me?”

Allura’s voice comes through the comm, illegible and lost in static. Then it fades. 

“Shit.” Pidge grumbles. “Come on, come  _ on. _ ”

“Have you checked the outlets?” Hunk sidesteps Keith to squat down next to her and examine the dash plating. Pidge grows increasingly frustrated, mumbling under her breath. She tosses her light headscarf off and shuffle closer to Hunk, pointing and muttering. “Shiro, can you try to talk to her?”

“I’ve  _ been  _ trying,” Shiro drags his fingers down his face and leans forward in his chair. “She’s not listening to me, it’s like she’s looking at something else.”

“Why would she ignore you? You’re the  _ boss. _ ” Pidge grumbles.

“It’s a cat thing,” Lance offers helpfully from the floor.

“Black doesn’t like to be told what to do.” Shiro gnaws his lip. “But she doesn’t leave us hanging either. If there’s a way we can solve this on our own, she’ll let us find it first.”

“Maybe just give her a prod?” Pidge sits back on her haunches and raises an eyebrow. Then she says squeakily, “‘ _ Hey, Black, we’ve got a fresh, juicy space deer carcass waiting in the hangar of the castle for you! But you gotta take us back, like, RIGHT NOW. Doesn’t that sound nice? Huh? Sweetpea?’ _ ”

“Stop.”

“ _ ‘Kitty witty?’ _ ”

“Pidge, shut up.” Hunk grumbles. Pidge snickers and turns back to the console, trying to pry open the dash panel with her fingernails.

“You talk that way to Green?” Keith asks from behind the chair.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Pidge says.

“I suppose to Green _ ,  _ it’s fine, she’s just like you.” Keith comes around the back, Shiro’s eyes following him the whole way. “Chatty, even though words don’t mean much to either of you.”

“I fail to see how this is relevant right now, Keith.” Pidge growls, losing her grip again and folding one of her nails over in the process. “ _ Shit _ .”

“Just give her a second.” Keith places his hand flat-palmed on the dash. “She’s the Black Lion. She demands  _ respect _ .”

The dash panel flies open, throwing Pidge to the ground. 

“That she does,” Shiro says, and if Keith didn’t know better, he’d think he’d be  _ purring _ . Lance’s one blue eye is focused, unblinking, on Keith.

The nav system lights up. Pidge lunges for the controls. 

“Allura? Allura, we’re back, can you hear me?” Pidge stares out the viewport, eyes still searching the pinpricked blackness ahead.

Static still consumes the commlink.

Keith stares out into space, listening intently for a blip, Allura’s voice, anything. 

“Could she be in trouble?”

“We’re at the exact same coordinates.”

“Remember Ulaz?” Keith chews his thumbnail. “There could be a pocket somewhere.”

Shiro frowns. “We’d have found it by now, even without the nav.”

Keith’s eyes rove across the plane of utter blackness, stars and distant planets winking dully out beyond Black’s viewport. He tries to reach out to Red, find her where she’s been missing him the past couple days, silent and barricaded in the castle hangar. Unsurprisingly, he’s met with nothing. 

He grimaces. He’s bloody cold. 

“What should we do?”

“We could go back planetside,” Hunk sits down hard and sighs harder. “Try to contact them from there.”

“Not unless you wanna try to liberate a planet with one lion,” Pidge murmurs. 

Keith’s eyes are becoming oddly glued to the space outside. The faint black light from the planet’s twin suns doesn’t do much for them but give a faint purple sheen to the viewport.

It hits Keith like a hollow blow, confusion, denial, and he spots it immediately after that.

Lance stands up next to him, and their hands bump when he finds his balance.

“Sorry-” Lance flutters next to him, and Keith barely registers it.

“Shiro, do you see that?” he says.

“See what?” 

“The edge. Right there.” he points. “Where the light reflects.” 

Next to him, Lance gasps. “Oh damn. What the fuck?”

Pidge snorts. “Well said.” 

“No, Pidge, he’s right. Look.” Shiro’s on the edge of his seat, squinting. He reaches over and taps the dashboard. “I’ll try to get a heat signature-”

The dash splinters, then sweeps over with blue. Lance lets out a breath. Keith’s eyes widen. 

Not a mile directly in front of them is a diamond-shaped patch of deep red. It consumes most of the viewport, blocking their vision of whatever lies beyond. 

It’s huge. It’s warm, just hanging there in deep space.

Keith speaks first. “How did we miss that?”

“I don’t think we did,” Lance whispers. “I- I felt something when everything went down-”

“Is it a Robeast?” Hunk cranes to look for its edges, and finds them in a vague diamond shape- skimmed and silhouetted with a distant star. “It looks metallic. A ship, maybe?”

Pidge blinks from behind the dash. “Too cold for a ship.”

“Look, there’s a seam-” Lance reaches out and traces it along the viewport, a horizontal line of white intersecting the red structure. “It looks like there’s something inside.”

“We’re not sticking around to find out.” Shiro reaches for his handles. He cranks them hard to the right to turn around, but encounters a dull  _ thunk  _ partway through the turn. 

His stomach drops to his feet. He cranks harder, and the resistance increases. 

His panic spikes when he tries to turn the other way and presses against the exact same resistance. 

_ What’s going on, Black? _

The dash goes out like a candle, thrumming ceasing and going utterly silent. The cockpit falls into darkness. He feels it then, the slight momentum.

“Black?” He says.

“We’re moving.” Lance’s voice is flat. “Shiro, what’s she doing, why isn’t she stopping.”

“It’s not her, it’s-” Shiro looks forwards, at the red mass. “It’s  _ that.” _

“A tractor beam?”

“Is it Galra?” 

“I-” 

Black’s voice is like a gong across water- rippling out before carrying into a whisper. His back goes ramrod straight when he hears it.

_ Let go. _

Shiro’s lips part. A breath washes over them all- an exhalation, barely a word- but they all hear it.

_ Let go. _

“What’s going on?”

“She’s telling me to let go.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Pidge says in a small voice.

Keith’s hand presses on the back of his chair. “What does she know that we don’t?”

Shiro hesitates. 

_ Let  _ **_go_ ** _. _

He carefully takes his hands off the controls, and they hover awkwardly before pressing down into his thighs.

“Alright,” he says. “alright.”

“Shiro, talk to us.” Hunk prods. 

“Black’s telling me to let it happen.” he says. “I-I don’t know why, but she’s telling me to let go.” 

Silence in the cockpit. The momentum steadily increases, giving a slight jump that jostles Keith where he stands. 

“We can’t ignore her word. But-”

Smoothly, the silhouette of the structure shifts- splits into two, then four, allowing the backlight from the nearby star to shine through the gaps. It pierces the screen, bathes the cockpit in white, searing Shiro’s eyes for a few moments. 

He distantly feels his stomach drop, his eyes grow dead heavy, and his last waking sight is that of Pidge, hunched over the console as if trapped by the same sensation. 

****

The Black Lion allows herself to be carried smoothly inside the structure, bypassing the sleek metal and complex circuitry that laces together as soon as she’s inside. 

The tractor beam releases her, and she gently floats her paladins through the sparse clouds to the ground, quietly as possible so as not to wake them. She briefly surveys the area, notes the sea that gently laps a grassy shore, and the distant lights in the houses of their hosts. 

She kneels near a beach, knowing Blue would love the water when he awoke. It would calm his no doubt hammering heart and settle his mind, give him something to ground himself to in what will no doubt be a stressful time ahead. 

Though Takashi twitches and shifts in her cockpit, his heart is steady and his eyes stay closed. He will wake up and he will be ready. 

She can’t touch the other paladins in the way their respective lions can, but she can hear their dreams as though through a translucent pane, or a glossy curtain, blurry and ill-defined without context.

All are serene, peacefully sprawled across the floor around Takashi’s seat, but for one. Blue clings to Red even in involuntary sleep with a ferocity Black somewhat admires. His dreams are sour, violent things; memories still too fresh and bloody to allow him an easy rest. 

She takes pity on him, just this once, and pours a thick wave of sleep over him as though covering him with a blanket. He resists, at first, but after that it only takes a few moments for him to relax, let his shoulders roll, his head to drift to the ground beside Red’s. 

Black surveys the empty land once more before shutting down her sensors for this planet’s night and waiting for their hosts to come greet them.

****

*

Five Earth months ago

*

****

Hunk hates the castle after dark. 

The light beams lining the hallway are never off, turning everything a ghostly blue without natural light flooding in, casting shadows in places that have made his hackles raise since day one.

He goes fast, quick out of his room into the kitchen, desperately ignoring the involuntary stab of fear as he passes through a deep shadow. 

As he rounds the corner into the kitchen, the sight of Lance sitting quietly at the island almost startles him out of his fucking mind.

“Hey, Lance.” he says softly, instead of screaming. “What’s going on, buddy?”

Lance turns to look at him, a small, tired smile on his face. “Couldn’t sleep. Anything to eat around here?”

Hunk smiles back, a desperate edge to it. “Yeah! Yeah, sure, absolutely, we got-” he scurries to the fridge and grabs the first full plate he sees- he’d been planning to chill the fruit overnight for breakfast tomorrow, but Lance looks like he could use something sweet. “We got some pretty sick pear things Keith picked on Syros, what I’m  _ assuming _ is a strawberry thing and a ton of these little buggers.” he plucks one of the coin-sized orange berries from the plate and pops it in his mouth. 

Lance’s hand seems especially thin when it passes over the plate, taking an orange berry and biting into it gingerly. Hunk counts the times he bites, chews and swallows. He has a small pink scar notching his upper lip that Hunk’s never seen before.

He has to remind himself to breathe, a little bit. 

Lance is  _ here, _ now. 

The night lighting in the kitchen is as garish as the rest of the castle- casting shadows on Lance’s face that hide his brows, his cheekbones, but do nothing for the purple, tough tissue that has interrupted Lance’s left eye. 

A few hours ago Lance had pulled down the Blue lion’s barrier for the first time in nearly a year and stepped inside, and he hadn’t come out. Hunk stayed the longest, frozen in place by the gut-wrenching sobs and cries coming from inside.

The Lance that sits before him looks like if he spoke, he’d shatter, if he moved, he’d collapse like a house of cards. He crosses his arms so tightly his elbows are cradled in his palms. His nails are broken and bitten to the quick. His shirt, that he’d once filled out, hangs loose and long on his frame- so much that Hunk can see the edge of the metal plate that now takes up the region from Lance’s left nipple to the middle of his sternum in a patchy circle.

A lump pulses in Hunk’s throat. What if it’s a dream? What if he wakes up and Lance is still gone?

“How’d it go with Blue?” he asks, busying himself making some tea for them. 

Lance swallows. “...Uh. Good.”

“Did she recognise you?” 

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.” Lance looks up at him and nods. “Right away, I just felt this… like this  _ whoosh,  _ right through my stomach. Just like the first time I saw her.” he smiles timidly. “the moment we walked in the hangar.”

“She talk to you?”

He shakes his head. “It was more than words.” he says. 

Hunk sets the boiling water aside and picks through their various tea jars scattered over the counter. The only thing besides sand, Hunk’s found, that’s the same in every galaxy they’ve visited, is the concept of tea. He’s amassed quite the collection of herb bundles, nuts and seeds and the like from most of the places they’ve been. 

When he turns back Lance’s shoulders are no longer tensed up to his ears- his arms are crossed rather than constrained and he’s resting his head on his forearm, watching Hunk bustle around. 

“I used to sleep in the cockpit, before they took me. After we got Shiro back.” he murmurs. “So we could dream together. We had a beach and an ocean I could play in.” 

This gives Hunk pause. He and Yellow have seeped into each other like tea infusing water- he’s only just started to dream of a sunny presence surrounding him in a beautiful pacific rainforest with rich, black soil. 

Blue rejected any pilot they tried to throw at her, even Allura, after Lance was gone. Now Hunk’s beginning to see why- if they were that deeply bonded that early, it was no wonder she dismissed every potential paladin.

Especially when Blue knew he was still alive despite what the team had seen.

Hunk’s eyes are drawn to his chestplate, before he turns around and adds a few drops of milk to Lance’s cup.

“I meditated the first chance I got.” Lance says. “I wasn’t awake for the first little while, but as soon as they left me alone I tried to reach out to her.”

“There was a night when she wouldn’t stop wailing.” Hunk says quietly. “We thought it was an electrical storm a few clicks away, but even when the day came she roared and roared and roared.”

Lance goes quiet. When Hunk turns to place his cup in front of him he doesn’t look at it. 

“It was fucking awful, you know.” Lance rasps. “Waiting for you guys to come for me. Realizing it wasn’t going to happen.”

Hunk stays silent. Lance won’t blow up on him- but his soft voice, his quiet, resigned tone is almost worse.

“I almost started to think it had all been a dream. Keith got prettier than ever when I closed my eyes, and Shiro more receptive. Then there was a point where I started to hate all of you.” Lance scrubs at his remaining eye. “I didn’t want to come because I knew I didn’t know you anymore. We hadn’t bonded again, we hadn’t seen each other-” he swallows and lets his lips part again with a soft  _ pop _ . “- and I wasn’t ready to… to be that way. I wasn’t ready to try as hard as I did and just… have it be for nothing.”

“Lance.” Hunk pulls him out of his head, heart burning, looking him in the eye. He reaches out to touch his hand, anchoring himself more than Lance on the sturdy caps of his knuckles. “If you feel like that, you gotta tell us.”

“I am now.” Lance shifts on his chair, pulls his untouched tea closer to himself. “I am. I’m saying it’s just one of those things that needs work. If I’m gonna stay, it needs work.”

Hunk stares at him. A tear skids down his cheek.

His rough hand flexes in Hunk’s. “I wanna stay.” He whispers. Hunk’s stomach drops. “But things can’t be the way they were before, okay? I wanna stay.”

****

Shiro heaves upward in his chair the second he wakes, panic flooding his chest and an involuntary shout finding its way into the dim cockpit. 

A quick glance around affords him some relief- all the kids are in a heap on the floor, Pidge and Hunk beginning to shift awake by the dashboard at his feet, and Keith beginning to mumble and groan in Lance’s tight grip around his waist. It would be adorable, were he not in 200% mother hen defense DEFCON 2. 

“Everybody alright? Pidge?” Shiro stands from his chair and almost falls over as blood rushes to his head.

Pidge rolls over, onto his feet. “What the fuck was that,” she whispers, facedown, into the floor.

“Tractor beam.” Shiro puts his flesh hand onto the dash and sighs in relief when it lights up. 

He runs a quick diagnostic check- everything comes up clear, but their navigation and flight are still down. Or, more likely, blocked off.

He scrubs his face quickly with the flats of both his hands, resisting the urge to scream, as his team wakes up around him. “Alright. Okay. Cool.”

Hunk’s propped up against the dash, rubbing his eyes, when Shiro checks the floor again. 

“Lance? Keith? You okay?” he shoots over his shoulder at the still-entangled paladins on the floor. “Wakey wakey, red n’ blue.”

Keith makes a deeply irritated noise and kicks Lance hard in the shin. “Get  _ off _ me-”

Lance jerks away from Keith as though burnt and grabs his leg. “Ow! Do you have steel soles or something? What the fuck was that?”

“That was  _ me _ telling  _ you  _ to stop  _ spooning me- _ ”

“Keith! Leave it.” Shiro barks. Lance and Keith go silent. Keith shoots Lance a glare and starts to get to his feet, face red. “Something’s up and I need all of you in the saddle if we’re gonna figure out what, am I clear?”

“Yessir,” comes a halfhearted chorus around him. He thinks Pidge may have said  _ yes mum _ but honestly he’s too fucked right now to care. 

“Black’s readings say the atmosphere’s breathable and it’s got reasonable gravity- but she’s not letting the blackout screen up. Navigation and flight are down, and she’s not speaking to me.” 

“Think we should take a walk?” Hunk asks.

“I’m down.” Lance cranes to look over his shoulder at the atmosphere readings. “Look at all that H-2-Awesome. Let’s do it.”

“Pidge, Keith, you two stay here.” Shiro straightens up and reaches under his hoodie, adjusting the straps in his projectile harness and standing up from the chair. “I want Hunk and Lance out with me.”

Keith grumbles, but sits tight. 

“No hard feelings, boys, it’s just that you’re wearing cheesecloth.” Lance shrugs as he backs down the bay with Hunk and Shiro, flipping up his jacket collar. 

Pidge, who found the cheesecloth quite comfortable, bristled and pulled the tan fabric tighter around herself.

****

There’s a lot of things that have happened in the last couple years that Shiro would never have expected. But aside from most of those things, the ease at which he takes in new worlds is probably the most significant. 

He’s met mucusy, sentient blobs with the most advanced military biotech money could buy; sleek, beautiful selkie creatures on their swamp world teeming with life and poison; beings seemingly carved from shining rock ingrained with the land itself.

He’s expecting the worst from this one. How fucked up does a planet have to be to have walls around its atmosphere?

But as he steps out of Black’s mouth he looks down and sees grass. 

Lance gasps like a sputtering pot.

There’s a sea, spreading out before him. Lush green grass sprouts up between the white sand, growing sparser and sparser as it flows down to the sparkling blue water. 

Black’s laid down on a plateau, so the ground slopes away from her down to a small, enclosed cove. There’s shallow rock cliffs bordering it, worn smooth by the persistence of the lapping waves. 

Shiro shuffles out a little further, caught between euphoria and trepidation. 

“What the frick,” Hunk says softly.

Shiro’s hackles raise as he gets a wave of feedbacked awe and happiness from Lance- and when he turns to tell him to keep his head, finds that he’s already dropped his defensive stance, wide eyes taking in the scenery, jaw dropped.

_ Lance, come on. Alien planet. Possible hostiles.  _ It’s all on the tip of his tongue. But Lance looks at him, and a fierce spike of longing that isn’t his own engulfs his chest. 

He sighs and rests his bayard on his hip. “Alright. Go see.”

“Thanks,” Lance says softly as he passes by, shedding his jacket. 

Pidge pokes her head down into the bay. “What’s going on? What’s- oh…”

Lance starts to navigate the slight slope into the beach, taking neat, staggered steps. He drops his bayard in the sand and kicks his boots off. Shiro holds his tongue and watches, tense, as he steps into the shallow water.

****

*Four Earth months ago*

****

“As you know, as paladins become more closely bonded with one another and their lions, it becomes easier to form Voltron.” Allura puts down her spoon and leans back in her chair. “Some choose to meditate with the aid of technology with each other, in an attempt to forge a mind meld outside of the lions. Some initiate group physical relations-” Hunk spits up his drink. “- Bless you- and form a five-way romantic bond, a more...  _ temperamental  _ and risky way to mind meld.”

“Risky because of what, Alien STDs?” Lance asks dully, chin propped on his crossed arms. He hasn’t touched his food and everyone has noticed.

Allura raises an eyebrow. “...No. Generally, paladins tend to avoid romantic attachment with each other because it poses too much risk of disrupting the balance if the rest of the group is not included somehow.”

“Well, there’s our last option out the window, boys.” Pidge mutters.

“Shoot,” Hunk sighs, bumping his fist on the table sadly.

“We do actually have to figure this out, you know.” Shiro grunts. “And group sex was never a realistic option.”

“I know you’ve thought about it, big boy.” Lance says, voice gravelly. He raises an eyebrow and grins. “You wanna  _ form Voltron  _ on our own sometime?”

“ _ No thank you buddy, _ ” Shiro says tightly.

“Wouldn’t forming Voltron on your own just mean you would be holding onto Shiro’s leg though?” Keith mutters.

“ _ Hot. _ ” Pidge chokes.

“ _ However- _ ” Allura grits out, looking as though she’s trying very hard not to smile, “There are many ways to increase the strength of a bond short of group sex.”

“Like sparring?” Shiro says hopefully.

Pidge perks up. “Ooh! Board games.”

Keith snorts. “Monopoly.”

“ _ Not in my kitchen, _ ” Hunk hisses.

“... Group meditation.” Allura finishes quietly. “Actually has been proven to strengthen every bond, no matter the size of the rift. Initiating a mind meld outside the lions is difficult- but repetitive practice in five-way mindsharing and crucial if there is to be full, complete trust between paladins.”

Pidge frowns. Lance sits, frozen, arms crossed tightly.

Hunk makes an  _ ehhhh _ noise. “Hasn’t really worked out for us in the past.”

Shiro’s brows draw together. “Well… we also haven’t  _ tried _ in years.”

“Nothing against you guys, but I can’t really see it going well,” Lance says.

“Never know until you try.” Keith murmurs.

Lance’s face pinches. “Scuse me?”

“I said we’ll never know until we try.” Keith says, slightly louder. 

“What? Keith- ugh.  _ No, querido,  _ I heard you.” Lance sighs deeply and sinks back, jaw clenched. “Just- nevermind.”

Keith stares at him. “Do you… not want to try?”

Lance stares at his knees. 

“I think we should try-”

“Yeah, I  _ get _ it, Keith.”

“It’s a good idea,” Pidge says, treading softly. “We could just work on opening up to each other a little more. We pretty much know everything about each other, anyway.”

The unspoken contradiction lingers in the air.  _ Bull.  _ Hunk’s mouth opens, then shuts again. 

Lance, who no longer has a brain-to-mouth filter of any kind, laughs like Pidge had just told him they’d be sending him on an undercover mission into the Galra fighting pits. 

****

When Lance’s bare toes touch the sand he almost cries.

He wades into the freezing cold water, unflinching, and drops to his knees and sits on his ankles. 

The water is clear enough that he can see all the way through- can count the dark sand grains dotting the white. It reminds him so much of home he aches.

The net connecting all of them is taut here, where his mind settles faster than it has in months. The ambient identities they take on in Lance’s brain are easy to distinguish- Keith, hangry and sweaty, holding Pidge’s legs where she’s dangling down the bay door. Shiro, trepidation and fondness taking over in equal amounts.

“You taking a dump over there or what?” Hunk shouts from the plateau.

He leans back and submerges himself for a few searingly cold moments. The bond freezes, melts, falls dormant until he needs it again. 

Lance stands up, soaked to the bone, and plods back up the beach, hooking two fingers in his boots and jacket as he does. 

Hunk nods approvingly. “Fuck yeah, bud.”

“Well you all seem to be enjoying yourselves,” A soft voice says.

Shiro whips around, bayard pointed, and looks into the broad face of the being standing  _ right fucking behind him. _

It startles as though they hadn’t been expecting artillery- its broad, v-shaped headfins perk and its wide green eyes shrink to pinpricks. It’s not much taller than Shiro, and unarmed.

“Who are you?” Shiro says harshly, Lance and Hunk in position behind him, Pidge keeping Keith at bay in the cockpit. “Why did you bring us here?” 

The being cocks their head. Their- hands? Paws? Lower slightly. “... Pardon  _ me _ ?”

“I-” Shiro’s brow furrows, losing momentum when the voice dips, incredulous. He casts a brief, confused glance at Hunk over his shoulder. “Um. Why did you bring us here?”

The being’s mouth- at least Shiro  _ thinks  _ it’s its mouth- quirks and another slot of its jaw opens; a lower, wider opening that is  _ actually  _ a mouth, and  _ wow those are sure some teeth _ . “I did not bring you here, paladin.” it says gently. “How did you come?”

“Through the gaps that surround the atmosphere.” Shiro doesn’t lower his guard, but does lower the gun. “We were pulled inside against our will.”

“Goodness.” it blinks, gaping maw closing. Shiro decides he doesn’t trust anything with that many rows of teeth. “I… I wasn’t expecting that.”

It’s a broad, thick creature, brownish skin dotted with patches of black that remind both Hunk and Lance of a seal. It has round, almost sweet eyes and a pursed mouth that opens to reveal the most threatening set of distinctly non-vegetarian teeth Shiro’s ever seen. 

Katie has shrunk out of sight, back into Black’s cockpit, shushing Keith when he wonders what’s going on and why Shiro isn’t responding to his prodding.  _ The fuck, Shiro.  _

“This is not how I was expecting this to go...” the being sits up a little straighter, now towering a good two feet over Shiro. “Goodness. Alright.” It puts a hand on its breast, head swivelling now to Black. Its mouth splits again in some approximation of a smile. “Hello, beauty.”

Black purrs. Shiro’s hackles raise. “ _ Uhh, _ ” He says threateningly.

“Is your whole team here? Blue, Yellow, and you must be Black-” It turns towards them again, hands clenching nervously. Its claws obsessively retract and extend over each other. 

Hunk cocks his head, recognizing a nervous tick when he sees one. Shiro, cracking his knuckles, rubbing his shirtsleeves between his fingers. He ignores it. “Is the rest of your team inside? Please, bid them come- No harm will befall you with me.”

“You know the Black Lion?” Shiro’s not quite ready to bring Pidge and Keith out- it brings him only some comfort that they’re safe in Black. 

It perks up. “Oh, Yes! My, uh- my people have had dealings with Voltron in the past. Many happy days spent with this lovely girl.” It reaches out and strokes her paw tenderly, patting the battered chrome. “So good to see her again.”

Shiro’s eyes flicker to Black. Back to the being. “Okay. What exactly is this place?”

“This place? This is  _ Perkerya,  _ a sanctuary of my own design.” The being gestures grandly with its densely muscled arm- Shiro sees mostly skin, patches of brown dots and, of course, those giant puppy eyes, which he can’t seem to escape. “I modeled it after my home planet _. _ Just a place for me to live in peace after all the adventuring in my youth.”

“You…  _ made  _ this place?” Hunk says, bewildered, glancing around again at the crystalline water, the green grass and soaring, endless skies.

“I did! Do you like it?” It says eagerly. 

“I, uh…” Hunk shrugs helplessly. “Yeah.”

“Perfectly contained- nothing goes in or out without going through me, and the outer defense system.” it narrows its eyes at the three of them. “Except the Black Lion and her five paladins, I suppose. But, that’s to be expected. Oh! I’m being so rude-” It takes a step back and bows with a flourish, cloth fluttering. “I am  _ Liram,  _ welcome to my home. You’re quite safe with me.”

“How do we know you’re not lying?” Keith’s voice cuts through from the back of the pack. 

“You haven’t given us much reason to trust you,” Pidge says.

Shiro doesn’t turn around, but lets them both know exactly how much fatherly disappointment is currently oozing out of him.  _ Thought I made it clear you were supposed to stay in the  _ **_goddamn_ ** _ cockpit-- _

“Ah! Green and Red, the circle is complete. Lovely.” Liram claps her hands together. “It’s wonderful to see such a close Voltron team!” 

“Put down your bayard, come on.” Hunk mutters. “She’s fine.”

“Do you know why we were brought here?” Shiro presses on. Hunk’s the most perceptive with strangers, but he’s been wrong before. “Is there anyone else in here with us?”   
“Well,” Liram hesitates. “There is my brother- but he minds his business, and though he’s no supporter of Voltron I doubt he even knows you’re here. But still, this would be much more comfortably discussed over some tea, I think. Privately. Will you come?”   
As if on cue, Black suddenly retracts her jaw, snapping shut and turning away. Shiro stammers, reaching for her, but she jumps up into flight, gone in the blink of an eye. 

They all stare, windblown, wide-eyed.

Shiro chokes.  _ Oh wow okay. Sure. Bye. Love you too. _

“I guess that’s as good an answer as any,” Hunk says crisply in the kind of voice the children of important people use when convincing themselves they have control of a situation. He walks right up to Liram, bayard away, and shakes her hand. “Sure, we’ll come. I’m Hunk.”

“Maker bless Yellow paladins,” Liram sighs, clasping his hand in both of hers. “Where would a team be without them.”

“Probably dead in a ditch outside the space mall.” Pidge bumps past him and grins up at her. “I’m Pidge. The eyepatch is Lance, fluffy boy is Keith, and our Black is Shiro, which is an oxymoron, but he’s our oxymoron and we love him.”

Keith frowns.  _ I’m not  _ **_fluffy_ ** _. _

“You have  _ volume, _ ” Lance corrects, tugging on the end of Keith’s distressed little braid.

“Lovely to meet you, Shiro!” Liram sticks out her hand to him, and he struggles for a moment before taking it with his prosthetic. “I’m terribly sorry for the circumstances under which we had to meet- but I must say, if you did trust me right off the bat I’d wager I’d be more worried than I am now. I completely understand.” She squeezes, either not noticing or ignoring how the metal doesn’t give under her hand. She looks down at him earnestly. “Please feel free to ask me anything you wish, take any measure you need for you and your team to feel secure.”

Shiro’s iron will, extremely biased towards courtesy, rank, and tea, bends like a sapling. “...Thank you for being so accommodating.” He grasps her back, and stands a little taller. “My team and I have been through a bit of an ordeal to get here.”

“Did you just come from a mission?” Liram perks, worrying her hands together again. 

“I’m afraid so. My Green and Red paladins, Pidge and Keith, have been mobilized and undercover in harsh conditions for several days. We were just heading out when we were intercepted by your home.”

“Some rest, then, and a meal for all of you,” she says resolutely. She looks down at Hunk knowingly. (that’s a trip, someone looking  _ down  _ at  _ Hunk _ ) “Might we have any cooks here who could offer me some assistance?”

“We have a cook here!” Hunk’s hand shoots up. “Lead the way!” 

Liram laughs, a dry, bubbly sound. “I thought so. Please, come with me.”

Shiro turns to Lance and Keith- who have been bristling further and further the longer the conversation went on. 

Keith comes reluctantly when he opens his hand, but Lance’s arms are crossed and he stays put. He’s still soaking wet in the humid, hot air, buzzed hair starting to stick up around his flat expression.

Shiro raises an eyebrow. Lance looks at him, then at Liram. He purses his lips. 

“... How did you know what lions we were?” Lance says. His eyepatch has started to slip with the water, showing off his notched brow. 

“Pardon me, Blue?” Liram steps a little closer, hands folded. Her wide, unblinking pupils focus on him. 

“We’re not wearing our armor. You got all our colours right first try.” He gestures widely with the downturned barrel of his bayard, the rifle resting in the crook of his elbow. “How did you know?”

Shiro casts a quick glance around at all of them, and- he’s right. None of them are in uniform, or wearing rank.  _ Fuck yeah, Lance. _

Liram blinks once, then swivels to look at Shiro. He looks back skeptically. “Well, I, um.” She clears her throat. “It was easy to distinguish your leader from the two support pillars, Yellow and Blue, and the way Red and Green, um, behaved, was quite telling.”

_ Fishy Fishy Fishy,  _ Hunk murmurs instantly. The air shifts, the tension souring. 

The whole team notices it. She’s not telling the truth. 

Lance shifts his weight back and forth, eye not moving from Liram’s.

“Hmm. Alright.” Lance shrugs and steps forward, beside Keith, rifle bobbing casually at his side. “If your people had dealings with Voltron in the past, it’s entirely possible you could figure that out.”

Liram sags, a hand on her breast. “Goodness. I’ve never met a Blue so fiercely protective of his team.”

“Oh, met many Blues?” Lance asks cordially. Pidge frowns. The seeds of suspicion and mistrust that crack in Lance’s brain have started to flower in hers.

“... A few.” Liram says tightly.

“Cool, cool.” Lance shoves his hands in his pockets, flashing his bayard away. “Shall we?”

****

Liram leads them down a rocky, well-traveled dirt path, conversing with Shiro at the front, followed by the rest of them, falling into formation automatically. Pidge and Keith flanking Shiro, Lance and Hunk protecting the back.

“I don’t trust her,” Lance mutters to him.

“I get it, but, like...” Hunk says back quietly. “You are a bit biased.”

Lance looks at him flatly. “Seriously?” 

Hunk stares back, unafraid of the obtrusive, judging glare. “Yeah, seriously. I’m in your head. I know you are.”

“Sometimes it’s okay to trust people, Lance.” Keith says quietly. 

Lance wheezes out a laugh, half in pure hilarity and half in embarrassment that Keith had been listening. “Oh wow, this coming from Mr. ‘I have some walls up’?”

“At least I acknowledge they’re there,” Keith says sharply. 

“Lay off.” Pidge mutters. 

The team falls into silence. Shiro and Liram are still going on about terraforming and the unique atmospheric requirements of oxygenating organisms.

“It’s so interesting that we come from such similar backgrounds!” Liram exclaims. 

“It is,” Shiro smiles nostalgically. “I knew someone who studied that kind of stuff, a couple years ago.”

He looks out over the plain they’re trekking, the long grass that borders the beaten dirt path. He can still hear the sea, and the wind is strong enough to sweep his fringe up off his face, bring a stinging tear to his eye as his smile melts off. “He would have loved this.”

****

The path gradually gets less and less beaten as the day wears on, Liram explained that her home planet had a moon cycle similar to that of Earth, though gravitational pull was strong enough to gradually eat away at the weaker landmasses at a much quicker rate. They’re still travelling along the coastline, through a wide path seemingly cut from the cliff itself, overhung by a rocky outcrop. They stick close to the border, mindful of the hundred-foot drop into the ocean, but Liram trots on ahead, once again oblivious or ignoring it. 

Lance slips as the path starts to ramp upwards, banging his knee on the wet, rocky ground. Hunk grabs his arm reflexively before he can fall the rest of the way. “Shit-” Lance grunts, grasping Hunk’s side. “Sorry, Hunk.” Shiro turns around, stopping the group. 

“All fine,” Hunk says immediately, supporting his elbow as he gets to his feet again. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good. I’m good.” Lance grunts, shaking off Hunk’s hand. “Let’s go.”

“Are you sure?” Shiro pipes up. “We can go slower, if you want, or someone can carry-”

“I don’t want to be carried,” Lance grits. 

Hunk takes his hand off Lance’s shoulder. “Okay! Okay, no that’s totally fine. Let’s just get going, then. Lead on, Miss Liram.” He says in a high, sympathetic voice. Lance bristles upon hearing it even as the group starts to move along.

Lance ignores the growing itch in his chest, and puts his hands in his pockets so he doesn’t grab Hunk again. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hunk says anyway, after Lance had  _ really thought they’d dropped the issue.  _

“Please don’t baby me, Hunk.” Lance says flatly.

“I’m not, I just want to make sure you’re all good-”

“Seriously, Haggar made sure I oxygenate way faster than the rest of you, I could fuckin’ sprint ahead if I wanted to-”

“Lance,” Keith says softly. “Come on. He was just trying to help.”

Lance immediately tenses at the soft tone. It pisses him off a lot more than he thought it would, beyond reason. The old desire to force a reaction out of him flares up. “I don’t need your help.”

Keith growls. “You’re starting to really piss me off.”

“Honey, it’s like, my purpose in life at this point,” Lance says wryly. “Only reason I get up in the morning.”

No one can really tell if he’s joking. 

Liram tilts her head toward Shiro. “Why do your Voltron bicker amongst themselves?” she whispers loudly. 

Shiro shakes his head frantically. They can all hear her. 

She turns her head around 180 degrees silently, still marching alongside Shiro and blinking at Hunk. “Why does Blue fight you? You were trying to help him.”

Hunk looks at the ground. 

“Yeah,  _ Blue _ .” Keith mutters,

“Shut it, Mullet.” Lance hisses.

“I swear to god I’m gonna have to take some executive action here if you both don’t can it, right now.” Shiro says very calmly.

A few more minutes pass in silence. 

Then, the final straw- “Blue, what happened to your eye?”

Pidge actually grimaces. “Um.”

Lance looks up at her. “It was cut out in an arena fight,” he answers simply.

“How long ago?”

He shrugs. “About nine months, if I had to guess. Maybe more.”

“Did you not receive aid afterwards? You should have been able to retain the damaged tissue if you had medical attention.”

Lance raises his eyebrows. “No way!”

Shiro places a very pointed hand on Liram’s arm. “So! Are there any other reasons you can think of we might have been pulled here? Your atmospheric barrier opened specifically for us, and you said your brother had a problem with Voltron, but the Black Lion insisted I allow this to happen.”

Liram gets a faraway look in her eyes. “She works mysteriously, does she not? Perhaps your visit here may be a blessing in disguise.”

“For who, exactly?” Pidge grumbles. 

Liram looks down on Pidge. The Green paladin looks back cooly. 

“For Voltron.”

The rock beneath them shudders.

Pidge stumbles first, closer to the ledge than Keith. Lance has to look to his team to make sure he didn’t just imagine it.

No, it happened. Everyone’s stopped. Hunk’s hands are out, as if to balance himself, and his eyes are wide. 

“...What was that?” Keith says.

Then, again, louder- a deep, sickening crack in the cliff. All at once his mind races with images, the deep foundation, wet rocks snapping apart,  _ fuck fuck just how stable did she make this thing- _

“Get close to the wall!” Shiro shouts. 

A shower of vegetation and huge boulders cascade over the cliff from the overhang- a resounding  _ snap  _ above them cracks off a huge portion of the rock over their heads. Hunk grabs Katie and wrenches her backwards, picking her up against his chest. “Fuck that! Is there a clear path up ahead?” Hunk demands, whipping around to look at Liram. “Somewhere we’ll be out of range?”

Liram startles, pupils shrinking to pinpricks. “Y-yes, there’s a clearing near the top of the hill, but-”

“Let’s go!” Shiro shouts over the wall of sound that encases them in the pathway. 

They start hoofing it up the hill- Katie not protesting as Hunk sprints ahead with her in his arms. Lance grabs Keith’s wrist when he starts lagging and rips him along the path.

“ _ Hey- _ ”

“ _ Fucking chill, Keith, just  _ **_run_ ** _!”  _

The rumbling continues, and Lance has to skip over some sizeable cracks in the path. Hunk’s constant internal monologue of uninterrupted screaming isn’t helping. 

“There! Up ahead!” Liram points, and Lance grits his teeth when he sees it. It’s an uncovered section of the path, still vulnerable to the sheer cliff face above it- but it’s out of the range of the rockslide, and the edge is less severe, dropping off into a steep, lush green hill down to the sea. He hears the path start to crumble behind him and all but throws Keith ahead of him, dumping him on the cleared path ahead with an un-paladinly shriek seconds before Lance skids to a stop and a giant, fragmented boulder smashes clean through the rock where he’d just been. 

They all watch, dumbfounded, as the cliff face they’d been on crumples and slides into the ocean.

Pidge and Hunk cling to each other, heaving. Keith’s still on his ass in the dirt. 

“Uhhhhhhhhh, hhhhhhh-” Shiro says loudly.

“What the  _ frick  _ was that?” Pidge freaks, squirming out of Hunk’s arms. She turns on Liram, spitting. “You said it was safe!” 

“It is!” Liram cries, blinking rapidly. “I- I stabilized the gravity, there’s no tectonic disruption, I can’t possibly imagine how this could have-”

“Waitwaitwaitwait wait, nonononono-” Lance holds up a hand, stomping over to Liram. “Your brother. You said your brother was in here too. What’s his problem with Voltron?” He scowls at her. “It’s not  _ safe  _ here if it’s big enough that he wants to  _ kill us. _ ”

Liram falters. “It’s… it’s complicated.”

“We don’t have time for complicated.” Shiro says, putting himself on Lance’s side. “We’ll take our leave if Voltron is put at risk.”

“Yes!  _ Thank you! _ ” Lance shouts, pointing at him. 

“But my brother does not have the capacity to make such drastic ecological changes in the area!” Liram says, distressed. Her hands rub together again. “Oh, dear, oh no, no, no, he can’t  _ do this… _ ”

“Is there a control room? Is there a physical place that he could have broken into to make this happen?” Pidge demands.

“There is nothing!  _ Perkerya  _ has been evolved many times, and its mountains are stable. There is no way this could have occurred naturally-”

Liram cuts herself off. She looks up. 

The rumbling starts up again, much closer than before. 

“ _ Talle- _ ” 

**_CRACK._ **

The path slides sideways on them, tipping them towards the mountainside. A cascade of rubble and dirt pours down over the path. Pidge stumbles, caught in the wave, and trips.

“ _ Katie! _ ” Through the haze Lance sees Shiro throw a grapple, but she’s too close to the edge she’s  _ too close- _

Hunk grabs Shiro and hauls him back, and that’s the last Lance sees of them before the wall of rocks and dirt cuts them off. Keith’s skidding towards the edge on his ass, grabbing Katie’s arm before she falls, but he’s not braced and Lance has to fucking  _ throw himself after him,  _ no time to think, just to lock his arms around Keith’s torso and pull.

Lance feels something give under him, in Keith’s body, and if he shouts it’s lost in the white noise that climbs over the mountainside as the cascade reaches its peak. He can’t see Pidge anymore, but Keith’s arm is still over the cliff and he can only pray that’s where she still is as he shuts his eyes and holds on tight. 

It fades slowly, but it fades. A few more giant boulders come crashing down the mountain above them, sailing clean over their heads, crashing and rolling in the underbrush and down the hill into the ocean, but it still fades. 

Lance is half-buried when it stops. The path is still diagonal, still moving, dropping off into the vegetation that slants steeply down the mountain to the sea. 

He breathes in, out, very slowly. He has to cough but he holds it in, swallowing hard. Keith’s heart is hammering under his thumb joint where it’s digging into his sternum, his breaths rapid and bursting. 

“Fuck-” Lance says hoarsely. “ _ Katie _ !” He shouts, voice cracking. 

“I’m here!” comes a terrified voice. “I’m here, I’m here, I can’t hold on, I can’t hold on-”

“One second, just-” Keith swallows, his voice strained. “Just keep looking at me-” his voice breaks wildly. “ _ fuck  _ I think you broke my shoulder-”

“Don’t you have your jetpack?” Lance yells down. Keith’s head is over the cliff, and for a moment, through Pidge’s eyes, Lance can see his wild, red face as he stares down at her, their white-knuckled, joined hands.

“Yeah but I don’t know if I have enough juice to break my fall.” She grits back.

“It’s gonna have to be enough.” Keith’s grip is starting to die, his muscles spasming as they struggle to hold his shoulder together. 

“Yeah, cause that makes sense.” Lance laughs wildly, grip tightening around Keith’s chest. “We’ll see you at the bottom, Katie cat.” 

Keith hisses, saliva bubbling between his teeth as the last of his grip strength gives. 

Katie lets go. Lance feels the absence of air in her lungs, and the ground rushing up to meet her. 

She engages her exhausted jetpack at the last possible moment, flipping her midair with the violence of the expulsion. Her body slams into the dirt, and she yells, but she’s safe.

As soon as she lets go Lance tightens his grip around Keith’s torso and hefts him up out of the way. At his disruption, the ledge crumples, soft dirt spraying into the open air down to the valley, and Lance can only hold Keith as they slide down with it, praying that’s all it is, prepared for more. 

And there’s air underneath them. 

And they’re falling.

He slams on his jetpack the second Keith’s full weight is on him, hitching them wildly in the air, still falling, before the stabilizing mechanism kicks in and their flight is slowed to a sputtering descent in the air beside the cliff. 

“Not meant for two,” Lance remarks.  _ And you weight a fuckton. _

Keith growls at him. 

They hit the ground with more speed than Lance expected, sending them rolling away from each other at the bottom of the cliff. 

Lance lies there for a moment, winded, staring sideways at the dirt. He lost his eyepatch somewhere in the fall and his eye hurts from the onslaught of natural light.  _ Arms. Legs. Nothing broken.  _

Keith’s huffing rattles his own ribcage, a flare of sharp pain in his shoulder that he feels from over six feet away. 

_ One thing broken,  _ Lance decides before closing his eyes and deciding to get up off the ground. 

“You good, Red?” He says as he approaches Keith’s limp form, discarding his empty pack and pulling his chestplate over his head so he’s just in a t shirt and dirt-coloured combat pants. 

Keith makes an effort-laden groan that sounds distinctly irritated.

“Aw, don’t be like that. Let’s get you fixed up.” Lance crouches and places a hand on his waist, gently applying pressure to help Keith lie on his back.

Keith lets himself be rolled over and fixes a pinched eye on Lance. His teeth are still clenched together, good arm clutching his opposite shoulder. 

He doesn’t even know how vulnerable he looks like that.

“What?” Keith growls. 

“How’s your shoulder.”

Keith grunts, face shining with the effort to maintain a stoically neutral expression. “It’s fine.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Lance mutters. He picks Keith up under his uninjured shoulder, letting the other side hang until he can get a better look at it. Keith’s head sags, his breathing deep and heavy. “I got you. It’s okay.” Lance’s grip tightens around his waist.

“Quiznak.” Keith wheezes when Lance sets him down against a tree trunk a good distance away from the slide. “That hurts.” 

“I know, buddy.” Lance says to Keith, kneeling next to him, getting tangled in his Star Wars desert wrapping when he tries to take it off. “ _ Por fucking dios  _ how did you even tie this?”   
“It wraps onto the tunic, you just have to-” Keith gasps and thumps his head back against the trunk, eyes fluttering for a moment. “ _ -Guhh _ just pop it back in.”

“I have to get a look at it, if I try to do it just like this I’ll make it worse. I think it might just be dislocated. ” Lance grunts, throwing a mental  _ fuck it  _ Keith’s way and grabbing his stash of little emo throwing knives out of his belt that Shiro doesn’t know about, slicing through before Keith can say anything about it. 

“Have we heard anything from Shiro and Hunk?” Keith looks upward, grimacing at the fractured cliff that now seems to tower above them. “OW.” he says as Lance applies gentle pressure just below his collarbone.

“Comms’re pulling static and not much else.” Lance grunts, Keith’s shirt between his teeth. “We got the worst of it, they’re probably fine.”

Lance grimaces when he sees the shoulder, humerus visibly rotated and dislocated from the socket. He places a hand on Keith’s clavicle, then against the cap of his deltoid where a purpling bruise has started to bloom, like a port wine stain, under the skin.

“Mmkay. Alright. Is it pinching anywhere?” He licks a drop of sweat off his upper lip and slides a hand around Keith’s scapula, feeling for tension.

“Just right under the-  _ ah,  _ where the bone moved-” Keith squeaks, flinching out of his hands. 

“Stay still!” 

“I’m  _ trying! _ ” He bites.

“Okay. Okay, it’s okay. Just concentrate on keeping the shoulder relaxed, I’m just gonna try to loosen you up a bit.” Lance digs his fingers lightly into the wiry muscle of his trapezius- forcing the tension to dissolve, mouth going a mile a minute as he grows jitterier. “Give you a lil massage. Get that shoulder back together.”

“It really hurts,” Keith hisses.

“I know it really hurts, just get pissed at me if it gets to be too much. Or wiggle your toes or count your throwing knives, I don’t care.” Lance grits his teeth as he touches the open joint through the skin. “Okay. I need you to lie down on your back.” 

“What are you gonna do?” Keith asks warily, looking up at him.

“I’m gonna pull it back into place, and it’s not gonna hurt as bad as you think it will.” Lance balls up the scrap of cloth he’d sliced from Keith’s shirt and gives it to him. “But put this in your mouth, because I don’t really want to know if there’s anything else in these woods that she didn’t tell us about.”

Keith crams the cloth into his mouth with his good hand. 

“Guys!” 

Lance has never been more relieved to hear Pidge’s voice. He whirls around. “Aw, Pidgeotto.”

She’s fine. She’s a little dirty and bruised, but she’s fine. She runs to him, face breaking in relief, but slows when she sees Keith on the ground. “Oh, fuck.”

“It’s all good, we just have to give him a little tug,” Lance says, lying through his teeth. “And I need you to help me. Keith, you mind donating some more of your shirt?” 

Keith gurgles angrily from the forest floor.

Two minutes later, they’re situated- Katie bracing Keith in place with the rest of his wrapping around his upper ribcage, below the dislocated shoulder, yanking the opposite way- Lance, holding Keith’s wrist and forearm, foot braced against his armpit.

Keith looks a little bit terrified now that he realizes what’s going to happen.

“Katie, all good?” Katie nods determinedly. “Keith, just remember to relax. Breathe deeply and just imagine punching me in the face when this is all over.”

“Thaff’s no’ comfor’i-” he grumbles, just before Lance counts down silently to Katie and they start to slowly pull in opposite directions.

Lance’s muscles have turned to fucking jelly over the past fifteen minutes, but he keeps his iron, trembling grip on Keith’s wrist and pulls slowly and smoothly, rotating the arm anteriorly  _ just like that- _

_Pop._ The bone slides back into place as though magnetised. Keith grunts, his body jerking once. Teeth locked in the ball of fabric, eyes squeezed shut.

Lance lets go, and falls back onto the forest floor. Keith’s limp arm falls somewhere in the vicinity of his left hip.

“Owwwwww…” Keith moans. His hand spasms and Lance can feel his nails scratching the skin where his shirt rides up.

“I know, kitty.” Lance says. “I know.”

****

_ Maker bless yellow paladins,  _ Shiro thinks sullenly.  _ What would a team be without them. _

“They’re fine, Shiro. I can feel them.” Hunk claps a hand on his shoulder.  “They’re gonna be fine. Come on, we’ll find a way to get down to them that’s not going to kill us. Liram?”

Liram bites her lip. “There is a path, but it may lead us through my brother’s territory…”

Shiro’s simmering anger flares. “Being in your territory didn’t stop him from doing this.” He grunts, getting to his feet. “Lead the way.”

She doesn’t move, just looks at him with her big sad eyes. Rubbing her hands together. “I’m really… so terribly sorry, Shiro…”

“If it wasn’t your fault, then I’m not angry,” he says serenely, still clearly very angry. “Just help me get them back.”

“Actually, I…” She hesitates. “I think it best if I take you somewhere safe for the night, and speak to my brother about this immediately.”

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “...I’d prefer if we could find my cadets first. Maybe hear some details about this brother of yours.”

“I know, believe me I do, but I will check in on them all night, and if I can neutralize this little…  _ tantrum  _ as fast as I can, I think it would be much easier to reunite you in the morning.” Liram worries. “I know you see my reason. I know you do.”

Shiro wants to say he doesn’t just for the sake of it. 

But he does. He sees it.

His shoulders slump. Keith and Lance and Pidge on their own for a night, unfamiliar planet, no Hunk, no Shiro or Coran or Allura. Really, it’s not that bad- he just let both his sword and shield go unaccompanied on a desert planet for three nights. 

What a difference not having an open, reliable communication link can have. Emotions, absent of words.

“Alright,” he says quietly. “Lead the way.”

****

Liram leads them to a dry, warm cave- which, really, is more than he’d been expecting. He and Hunk stoke up a fire, gnaw halfheartedly on what Liram gives them before she vanishes into the night.

“I know you’re worried,” Hunk says, after an hour of staring absently into the flames, watching Shiro try and fail to sift deeper into the bond. “But you’re gonna hurt yourself if you keep trying to force it.”

Shiro shuts his eyes and rubs his face. “Sorry.” he murmurs. “You’re right.” he turns to Hunk hopefully. Seeking out his three errant pilots when they’re not also looking for him is like looking for buried toys in a sandbox. “Can you feel anyone? You’re better at this than I am.”

By which he means Hunk had opened up the fastest, the most readily- spilling all his past and present and warmth like bright ink into the pool. They’d worked through him, through his struggles from earth that still tried to snuff out his bright light, every discrepancy that came after. Hunk was their support- different than Lance, tying them to where they came from, as tumultuous and emotional as the sea- as steady as the rock beneath their feet.

The rock that had crumbled beneath their feet.

Hunk shrugs. “A little bit. Pidge, mostly. She’s worrying about keeping the boys warm without a fire.”

Shiro chuckles. “Are they gonna snuggle for warmth?”

Hunk giggles. “Actually, yeah. Keith runs the hottest, but Lance gave him his jacket.” 

They’re comfortably silent for a moment. Hunk lays down on his jacket, but doesn’t fall asleep, only stares at the fire some more.

“Hunk?” Shiro asks quietly, some time later.

“Yep?”

“You did a really good job today keeping your head.” Shiro says. “You grabbed Pidge before she could fall the first time, and carried her up the pathway. And pulled me out of the way of the slide.” There’s a wry twist of humor in his voice at that. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

Hunk processes this, silently. Shiro pokes the bond, and recognizes the turning of gears in Hunk’s brain, the quiet, seeding noise of his nonstop thoughts. It makes him smile. An engineer’s mind.

“Of course.” Hunk says softly. “Anytime.”

He wishes Hunk were closer so he could touch him. “I’ll take first watch? You need some rest.”

“Thanks.”

He settles for scooting forward and reaching out, touching the top of Hunk’s head fondly, and a pulse of acknowledgement doubles back.

At the sound of a soft pattering outside, he turns his head. 

It’s raining. 

****

*

Four Earth Months ago

*

****

They’re not sure exactly why it started, or how. 

But they’re here, anyway. No use blaming anybody when they’re all sucked under a blanket of terror like touching an electric fence- pulsing through the whole body, lighting up the synapses in a way that makes them scream.

Katie breaks through first, and after her comes Hunk, scrambling away from the loose circle they’d formed, crosslegged, just like the first time they’d tried this a million fucking years ago. He rips off the headset and clutches it, chest heaving, as Shiro and Keith simultaneously recoil and their headsets go skittering across the floor.

Lance comes a little slower. Not only is he crying, he looks mad about it. He places his headset very quietly but firmly on the ground. 

Lance looks every one of them in the eye from where they sit on their asses, breathing hard, trying to make sense of the frayed wire end of Lance’s psyche. “This ain’t it,” he says through gritted teeth. “If we’re gonna do this, this isn’t the way.”

Shiro seems to gather himself, and starts to move to Lance. “It’s not your fault, bud-”

Katie doesn’t know where her brain ends and the rest of theirs begins. She swears to fuck she can feel when Lance’s skin shocks Shiro’s when they touch, that she can feel Keith’s little galra ears pinned flat back onto his skull, non receptive.

“Well, your brainwaves looked a little weirder that time, not gonna lie!” Coran’s voice rings out over the intercom. 

“How long were we under?” Keith starts to rub his eyes to dispel some of the residual connection, shaking himself to feel like he’s in his own skin and not Lance’s. He bristles when the feeling refuses to fade.

“I believe that time was ten seconds.” 

“Oh, jeez,” Hunk says like a deflated balloon. “We fuckin’ suck at this.”

“Want to try again?”

“Not particularly.”

“Welp, I don’t think you have much choice in the matter because Allura has just exited the observation deck and she doesn’t look happy! For my own safety, I will be exiting this conversation!” and the intercom clinks as Coran signs off.

“Oh, wonderful.” Lance mutters, putting his face in his hands. 

“How are you feeling?” Shiro murmurs, scooching closer to him so their shoulders bump. “We’ll stop, just talk to me for now.”

“I wanna stay.” Lance whispers. “I love you guys. Shiro… I know you told me to think about the options, and what would help me get better but…” Lance looks at him helplessly. “I honestly don’t think this is how we’re gonna do it.”

Shiro nods grimly, satisfied. “We love you too. Every one of us. And we’ll find a way.”

And they’re not wearing their headsets anymore. The first touch of Lance’s hindbrain in the conversation made sure of that. But when Shiro bumps his forehead against Lance’s temple so they briefly share a breath, there’s something there. 

For a moment, for a flash, Lance looks at himself through Shiro’s eyes, feels their fingers brushing in the opposite way he would normally.

The impulse is less, that time. But it didn’t stay that way. 

It took a lot of tears to get to where they would eventually live, a serene pool carved in a private room off the training deck. It may have been a hot tub, but they repurposed it, at first to make Lance more comfortable trying to resonate. 

It happened by accident the first time, when they were lazing around, coming back from a mission that made them feel like crap, as they were wont to do. 

There was enough room for the five of them to spread out and not bump elbows- but they piled together somatically, the feeling the same as when Shiro and Keith fall asleep on each other’s shoulders, when Lance finds Pidge and Hunk spooning on the nest of pillows down in the lab. And they fell into each other’s brains like salt into water, conduction present but no impulse to paralyze them where they lay.

There was darkness curling at all corners of their space. All five kept their secrets for the time being, all five were reserved enough that they slipped out soon enough, back into their own bodies in the pool and not a one the wiser.

****

Shiro’s eye jumps. He turns away from Hunk’s pinched face and rubs the bridge of his nose, sighing gustily. He can feel his own pulse deep inside his hideous migraine, pushing against his optic nerve in a way that only gives him another reason to want to bang his head against a wall. 

He feels twitchy, restless even though he knows he’s exhausted. If he tries to sleep now, he knows instinctively that sleep paralysis will set in.

Still, he risks shutting his eyes for a few moments. 

And when he opens them, he isn’t surprised to find the gleam of the fire reflected off tanned skin in the corner of his vision. 

It’s been several months since this started happening. He used to be ecstatic, afraid, crushing them together like he would disappear if Shiro let go for even a moment. 

Now he greets it like an old friend, his presence exhausting. 

“Hi, Mattie.” He murmurs. 

“Hi, Shiro.” Matt replies, equally as soft. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! sure has been a Frickin while  
> that's okay though, because during that Frickin while I've had a lot of shit happen. and the thing with shit happening is it changes your mindset sometimes. And sometimes that reason is because of two deaths in the family, or because you hate talking about money, or because work or university gets to you, or because your parents who have quietly pretended to like each other on the downlow your whole entire life finalize their divorce with three kids between the ages of 22 and 16 in the middle of it and you realize you don't know what a healthy relationship really looks like and you question your own sexuality and what you put out into the world based on your personal experiences and how they have shaped you  
> it be like dat sometimes  
> anyway im posting again because i write because it makes me happy and I have achieved the mindset and the motivation to want to be happy again in this way. 
> 
> Also cause I haven't watched Voltron in like 2 years and i heard it sucks now and since I've had this in the barrel for that long i figured now was the time, if only to spam r/idiots with screencaps of the comments this may or may not rake in  
> PEACE & LOVE see u around


End file.
